OAKLAND, CALIF.—The Blue Jays and GM Alex Anthopoulos, after all is said and done, may not be in such a hurry to add a veteran starting pitcher at the trade deadline. That is especially true if rookie Marcus Stroman continues to progress, as he has since joining the rotation on the final day of May.

On Friday, in a 1-0 loss in 12 innings to the Oakland Athletics in a holiday matinee at the Coliseum, the confident Stroman stared down the best team in the AL in their own building, working seven shutout innings and limiting the A’s to one hit in 15 at-bats with men on base. The 23-year-old right-hander has now allowed 10 earned runs in 43.1 innings (2.08 ERA) over seven starts, with six of them being quality.

“I feel like I’m a pretty confident guy,” Stroman said. “That definitely plays a lot bigger part than people could ever imagine. If you think you can get people out, you can get people out. A lot of times people doubt people, but I’m pretty confident and I feel like I can get anyone out.”

The Coliseum is a quirky place to pitch with a high, difficult sky, lots of foul ground and often difficult winds. Stroman battled all of those elements, including a bloop double onto the right-field line with one out in the fourth inning, base hits that barely squeezed by infielders and a pop-up into foul territory that landed as shortstop Jose Reyes battled the sky. All three times he battled back to escape damage.

“I feel like I’m able to keep cool in certain situations,” Stroman said of his growth in maturity. “Nothing ever fazes me. I stay confident and feel I’m able to bear down regardless of the situation, whatever presents itself. I feel like I can bear down and get outs when I need them.”

In his previous start, facing the White Sox, he left in the seventh with a 2-0 lead, two on and two out, after 96 pitches. It backfired when Dayan Viciedo clubbed a three-run blast off Dustin McGowan to give Chicago the win and Stroman a hard-fought no-decision. On this Fourth of July holiday, Gibbons allowed the diminutive former first-round pick to finish his own seventh.

The product of Duke University ended the day with 115 pitches, a personal high. His most before that was 114 in an eight-inning win over the Yankees. In the two games in which he has exceeded 100 pitches, Stroman allowed just one run in 15 innings, with four walks and 14 strikeouts.

“The minor leagues are a pretty strict 100-pitch count,” Stroman said in explaining his progress in the majors. “Once you get to that limit you come out or you’re done, but up here it’s ‘win first’ and I feel like Gibby’s been letting me go deep into games and letting me push that pitch limit up, which is completely fine with me. I feel strong and I feel like I get stronger as games go on.”

After the starters left on Friday, it became a battle of the bullpens. The A’s this year boast one of the deepest and most effective groups of relievers in baseball. The Jays, for their part, received solid innings from Aaron Loup and McGowan. But Brett Cecil, after retiring the first man he faced in the 10th, walked Coco Crisp and was quickly replaced by right-hander Chad Jenkins.

“The pitching’s definitely stepping up,” manager John Gibbons said. “But we’re not able to do anything offensively the last two days.”

Unfortunately for the Jays, Oakland’s bullpen and defence proved the sturdier. It ended when Jenkins walked Derek Norris leading off the 12th and Oakland walked off on a Nick Punto line drive sliced down the left-field line that Melky Cabrera tried to cut off before it reached the corner. The ball got by him and Norris came all the way around, giving the A’s victories in the first two games of the series.

It was Oakland’s sixth walk-off victory of the season and the first game the A’s played that remained scoreless into the 12th since facing the Jays at the Coliseum on July 20, 2004.

The Jays’ batting order against left-hander Tommy Milone did not scare anyone dressed in green and white, once you got by fifth-place hitter Dioner Navarro. With former and recent Buffalo Bisons Brad Glenn, Steve Tolleson, Darin Mastroianni and Munenori Kawasaki batting consecutively at the bottom of the lineup, it proved just how vulnerable the Jays have become to southpaws minus Brett Lawrie and Colby Rasmus, and with Jose Bautista confined to DH duties. They must manufacture runs and play solid defence to win.

“I have no excuses, this is our team,” Gibbons said. “You go out there and compete every day and hopefully it turns around. It’s frustrating. It’s not for lack of effort. We had some chances — not a lot. We need to start picking up some hits here to win some ballgames.”

For the second day in a row on this 10-game, three-city road trip, the Jay bats came up punchless. The only run scored against Sonny Gray on Thursday was after Gibbons challenged a safe call on Kawasaki, one of his own players, and won. On Friday against the soft-tossing Milone, the bats were equally silent over six innings, scraping together four hits and no runs.

The Jays are now a combined 52 games under .500 on their 20 road trips of nine games or more dating back to 2009. They are 0-2 so far on this trip, with two games remaining against the A’s before heading to Anaheim and Tampa Bay for three each.

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